Previously, on Side Bet Episode 1:

The Verdict for the First Side Bet

Given my review of my options, I’m going to aim at creating and selling an online course, teaching others how to build their niche audience on LinkedIn, like I did.

(Btw, I’m going to make decisions quickly like this and embrace failing fast. 10% planning, 90% execution and testing).

👋 I’m building an online course…where do I start?

💡 Following along: Once you've selected a Side Bet using the framework from the last post, do the exercise below. List all of the stuff you think you might need to get moving. Do it fast. Perfection sucks. Planning too much sucks. Write down general themes and bullet points for each one, then you'll flesh them out as you actually start executing. Here we go!

Here’s my guess on what I’ll need to actually get this thing off the ground:

Content

This is the actual meat and potatoes of the course. What am I going to share? How can I make it digestible? Luckily, I selected a Side Bet that just requires me to document how I’ve already done a specific thing; in this case, how I built a niche audience on LinkedIn

I should answer the following questions, at minimum:

• How do I write (e.g. what’s the voice)?

• Who do I write for (e.g. the audience and specifically, my ideal customer)?

• How do I generate ideas?

• How do I generate multiple posts based on ones that have performed well?

• How can I review my progress?

• When do I post?

A learning platform

How do I deploy the content? Where can I upload documents / videos and make them purchase-able? I don’t know a lot about this, so some research is required here

A pricing plan

How much should I charge? Should I offer multiple products, in addition to the course? A white paper, perhaps?

A promotion plan

This newsletter is part of the promo plan, I guess, but how can I leverage LinkedIn and other platforms to effectively publicize and sell my online course?

👨🏻‍🔬 Research Time (aka Time to Copy People)

I feel comfortable with the content piece above. I’ll just rattle off what I do and frame it up over time. (I’ll look at what other experts did in terms of breaking content down into digestible chunks, but that’ll come later.)

I don’t know anything about learning platforms, though. I think I’ve taken a portion of exactly one online course. YouTube is my go-to to learn something - but that’s usually looking up how to tie a really great Windsor when I forget during my once-annual suit wearing occasion. Which ones are good for in-depth, follow-along, take-action-on-the-learning, costs-money style learning?

When you don’t know something, one way to approach it is to spend a lot of time Googling and reading and sifting through whichever companies spent the most money on Google Adwords. Here’s an example:

There are a lot of them. I want a simple, nearly-free one. And one with a good free trial period. I could spend all day evaluating and reading blog posts to educate myself, or I could just take a big fat shortcut and think back to something I saw recently:

I told y’all I respected Justin Welsh’s ‘solopreneur’ takes, and I remembered this post. What is the Stan Store?

Turns out, it’s a very easy way to get an online course built and linkable - specifically on your LinkedIn profile.

Easy - I’ll start there. If it doesn’t work, I’ll go to something else.

Did that seem like too quick of a decision for you? Well, too bad. I've fallen into the 'the plan has to be perfect' pattern before, and guess what? Never built anything substantial that produces Side Bet revenue. This time around we're going fast and getting shit to market and iterating as we go. So, Stan it is. 

The pricing plan for my course is straightforward - I want to be cheaper than the ‘big’ audience-building, LinkedIn-writing folks. Justin’s is $99. Mine is $24.99. Might change it later. There, done.

Promotion plan will be this newsletter, my LinkedIn posts, and X posts. I have about 9 followers on X, so not expecting a lot there. Later, I plan on hitting up ‘influencers’ and giving them a look at what I’m doing, maybe they’ll support my pursuits. There, done.

I named it

I also named the course, as I started building the scaffolding of my content.

So The Road to 25k begins. Next post I’ll outline my early experience with Stan and how I’ve started building content on Google Slides. Holla at me with questions or comments, and subscribe if you haven’t.

Place your bets…(still a stupid tagline, but I like it)

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